


Velveteen

by prairiecrow



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Alien Culture, Friendship, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-25
Updated: 2011-08-25
Packaged: 2017-10-23 01:39:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/244831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prairiecrow/pseuds/prairiecrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Garak and Bashir discuss "The Velveteen Rabbit" over lunch, with predictable results.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Velveteen

**Author's Note:**

> 1) Set post-"The Wire" and pre-"The Search".

It had been a morning full of small annoyances, including a certain Bajoran engineer who was always full of petty complaints about the length of his trousers and the cut of his coats, so Garak was quite happy to finally sit down to his weekly lunch with Doctor Julian Bashir. It promised to be a most entertaining hour if the expression of barely contained anticipation on the Human's face was anything to go by, and Garak prided himself on being an excellent judge of those sorts of things.

"Well, Garak," Bashir asked with youthful eagerness once they'd settled down at their usual Replimat table with their food (a bowl of soup for Garak as a concession to his waistline and a thick sandwich and slice of pie for the good Doctor, whose slender form laughed at the notion of calories). "What did you think?"

Garak took a moment to taste his soup before replying. "Let me guess: it's meant to be a tale about the redemptive power of love in the face of impossible odds."

"Yes." His soulful eyes were almost pleading. "And?"

It was all he could do not to smile at the Human's enthusiasm. Sometimes Bashir made this too easy. "In that case, I'd say that it fails miserably."

"Fails —?" Bashir became as indignant as Garak would have expected. "I'll have you know that  _The Velveteen Rabbit_  is one of the classics of Terran children's literature!"

"And like most of your classics, it falls apart under critical examination." Another sip of soup, taking his time. It never hurt to let Bashir stew in his own juices. "For the moment, let's set aside the fact that it's about stuffed toys in a nursery who have somehow attained the miraculous power of sentience and speech — and that's a large burden to suspend on the scaffold of disbelief, I must say — and concentrate on the particulars of the story. The Velveteen Rabbit starts out shiny and new, doesn't he? A gift found in a stocking on Christmas morning?"

"Yes, a traditional time for giving presents."

"And the time of the winter solstice on your planet, correct? When the days start to grow longer?"

"It's near that point in the astronomical calendar." He picked up his sandwich and took a big bite, clearly intending to grab whatever nourishment he could between offering rebuttals to Garak's arguments.

"A rather heavy-handed metaphor for the birthing process, wouldn't you say?" Garak continued serenely. "I was amazed that the Boy didn't swaddle in him a soft blanket and feed him drops of warm milk from a spoon."

"It would have stained his cloth face and made him all soggy," Bashir retorted, "since toy rabbits can't drink milk."

"A valid point. I can see that you're thinking more logically than the author of the story in question."

"She didn't have the Boy feeding him milk either."

"True, but in almost every other respect she casts common sense by the wayside. So!" Garak warmed to his argument. "We have the Velveteen Rabbit, all bright and immaculate and ready to take his place in the nursery pantheon, albeit in a rather minor role at this point. He's not the Boy's favourite yet, and I must give the author some credit for having him languish in relative obscurity for a period of time after his promising debut, as most young men do before what you Humans call 'luck' comes along and elevates them to their proper — or improper — station in life. And appropriately enough he has an older and wiser individual to instruct him during his time in the ranks of the unimportant: the Skin Horse, who is very disappointing mentor indeed when you consider the advice he has to offer. For example, his little speech about becoming 'Real'… I thought that the Federation viewed all sentient creatures as equally deserving of respect and protection?"

Bashir, who'd paused in eating and had been looking like he was waiting for an opportunity to interject, took it. "Of course we do!"

"Then why are talking stuffed toys viewed as second-class citizens, even amongst themselves?"

"Garak,  _The Velveteen Rabbit_  was written centuries before the Federation was founded, or even before Humanity became aware that other intelligent species existed."

"Yes, I suppose that would explain it, along with the Skin Horse's lecture about becoming something better than what the Velveteen Rabbit currently was." He shook his head and slipped in a mouthful of soup before picking up the thread again: "Being fed propaganda about the power of being loved by a Human does serve the Rabbit well in one respect: it makes him willing to tolerate the separation from his former comrades and all the various inconveniences of being a well-used toy when he finally comes to the Boy's attention by virtue of the first  _deus ex machina_  in the story. It makes one wonder if that wasn't the Skin Horse's goal all along, doesn't it?"

"What, to prepare the Rabbit to endure the hardships of being used for his preordained purpose?" Bashir's eyeroll was just subtle enough to skirt the edge of outright discourtesy. "How very Cardassian of you."

"Thank you," Garak smiled, "I do try." 

"But it's not just a matter of fulfilling his duty," Bashir insisted after swallowing another mouthful of bread and butter and meat. "The Rabbit  _wants_  to be with the Boy. Oh, certainly he's lonely at first, away from all his fellow toys, but he quickly comes to adore the child and to view him as his best friend in the world."

"Which is his first mistake," Garak countered smoothly. "I mean, really — how stupid was he, to believe that a Human boy could truly become attached to him, a creature crafted of cloth and stuffing?"

A smile tugged at the corner of Bashir's mouth and for a moment he looked almost wistful. "You'd be surprised at the depth of attachment children feel toward their toys, Garak. And some adults as well."

Garak made a mental note to track down the source of the Human's expression in a future conversation. For the moment he stuck to the topic at hand: "Be that as it may, it's clear from the text that my interpretation is the more valid of the two. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's go back to the Skin Horse for a moment, and his statements about moving to the next level of toy existence. The author strongly implies that to be Real is to always be truthful, which I for one deeply resent."

The Human's smile widened. "I thought you'd like the Skin Horse. He's been through the wars, after all."

"Maybe, but he fills the Rabbit's head with all sorts of nonsense."

"Which doesn't turn out to be nonsense at all in the end."

"Only because the story as a whole lacks internal logic and consistency. May I continue?"

"By all means. Watching you tear apart a Terran classic is quite entertaining." His sandwich was gone — as usual he'd eaten at a speed that Garak would have found impressive in a Gitarian Dragon — and he picked up his fork to attack his slice of yigarish pie. 

"I'm glad you think so. Where was I?… Ah, yes, a young Rabbit's progress. So now he's the Boy's constant companion, taken everywhere he goes and dragged into the most ridiculous games, shoved under hedges and covered in mud, and even left out in the cold damp night when the Boy forgets him in the garden one evening — yet all this is made worthwhile when the Boy says that magic word — REAL! — and the Rabbit —"

"Garak, you're completely leaving out the fact that the Rabbit is  _happy_  with the Boy. He's not enduring being played with, he's a willing participant —"

"— as willing as a stuffed animal with no ability to move on its own can be?" Garak interjected with a little smirk.

"— and he's enjoying himself so much that he doesn't even notice how shabby he's becoming from being played with so much," Bashir concluded, undeterred. "That's part of the story's message: That if you live life to the fullest, if you love and let yourself be loved in return, then the aches and pains that the world throws at you don't matter."

Garak raised both eyeridges. "At all?" he asked incredulously.

"At all," Bashir affirmed, and had another mouthful of pie as a flourish of punctuation.

Garak shook his head again, this time in a pitying manner. "Oh, my dear Doctor," he lamented, "your optimism is as misplaced as it is astonishing."

"I suppose that the Cardassian version would be all about duty to the State and being a well-adjusted citizen," Bashir quipped.

"Cardassians aren't in the habit of telling our children stories about stuffed toys that talk," Garak sniffed. "We much prefer to offer instructive histories. But if you think about it, it actually works much better when interpreted in those terms." In response to Bashir's look of borderline exasperation Garak sighed and put down his spoon. "The Velveteen Rabbit fulfills his duty by comforting the Boy as he lies ill, but when that task is accomplished he's full of contagion, worn out and quite useless to any healthy child. The responsible thing for him to have done would have been to go to his destruction secure in the knowledge that he'd completed his mission and served his purpose. But what does he do instead? He stews in his own regrets, and weeps until a second massive  _deus ex machina_  clanks into view to pull him out of the hat."

"The sack."

"I beg your pardon?"

"He was in a sack."

"Sack, hat… rabbits are such magical creatures in your culture, aren't they?"

Bashir was now looking both disgruntled and amused, but he did not rise to the bait. Much. "Actually, yes, they are. They're also an ancient symbol of fertility, which I suppose comes back to your earlier comment about being 'born' out of a stocking."

"There! You see how my criticism all hangs together?" Garak allowed himself a triumphant smile. Bashir did not seem impressed by it. 

"But don't you see, it's the fact that he weeps — that he's capable of both love and regret — that saves him! If he didn't love the Boy so much that —"

"And there's another badly mistaken notion," Garak interrupted, "the idea that love is essential in order to be Real. On the contrary: love tends to make people behave in ways that are quite unlike their usual selves, not in keeping with their fundamental characters at all."

"Really?" Bashir put down his fork, set his elbows on the table, and rested his chin on the backs of his folded hands, regarding Garak intently. "Are you speaking from personal experience?"

Garak's smile turned bland and opaque, allowing only a hint of challenge to show through. "Are you going to deny that people 'in love' often do the most unexpected things?"

"No, but I'd also argue that love taps into who a person really is. It makes them capable of astounding charity, compassion and self-sacrifice."

"Like the Boy when he abandoned the Rabbit without a backward glance when offered a trip to the seaside?"

Bashir sat up straight again, scowling slightly. "Well… he'd just been seriously ill, and he probably didn't realize that the Rabbit was about to be burned."

"A conclusion unsupported by the source text." Garak took another delicate sip of his soup, which was really quite appetizing. "It seems that the Boy loved the Rabbit only when it was convenient for him to do so, which rather undercuts the story's assertion that love is a transformative force."

"But the Boy's love was only part of the equation," Bashir argued with the admirable tenacity that was part of what Garak liked best about his company. "The Rabbit's love for the Boy was equally important, if not more so. Being loved isn't enough to make one Real, not unless one learns how to love in return." Bashir had that look on his face that meant he was thinking on the fly. It always pleased Garak to see it. "Or how to weep. That was what made the Rabbit Real in the end: the single tear he shed. If he hadn't wept the Fairy would never have appeared and he would have ended up going into the fire in the morning."

"So you're saying that love without pain isn't really love?"

"I suppose so, yes."

"Hm. For once, Doctor, you and I agree on something." Garak wiped his lips on his napkin before continuing. "But really — the  _nursery magic Fairy?"_  He chided Bashir with a stern forefinger. "The nonsense you fill your children's heads with! It's no wonder they grow up to be Federation physicians and devotees to all sorts of lost causes."

Bashir humphed softly and stabbed the final bite of his pie, chewing hastily so that he could swallow and retort: "Fine, be that way. But the fact remains that in the end the Rabbit became Real, and lived happily ever after."

"That's another horribly misguided trope, but we can discuss it another time." He picked up his spoon again and was just about to offer a point about the Rabbit's envy of the living animals he was based upon when Bashir's comm badge chirped imperatively.

 _"Sisko to Bashir."_

Bashir tapped the icon on his chest. "Go ahead, Commander."

 _"I need to see you in Ops immediately, Doctor."_

"I'm on my way." Another tap, and he turned apologetic hazel eyes on his Cardassian companion. "I'm sorry, Garak, but it looks like —"

"Of course, Doctor. These things happen." Garak offered a mild smile devoid of reproof. " _The Velveteen Rabbit_  has waited for four hundred years; I'm sure another week won't make any difference."

"Until next time, then?" Bashir nodded as he rose from his chair and Garak watched him depart, a slightly more genuine curve of pleasure lingering on his grey lips for a moment before the willowy figure disappeared into the pedestrian crowd and he turned his attention back to his bowl. In spite of the interruption and the stress of a morning that had been full of annoying customers he felt calm now, soothed and at peace. He was not a man given to sentimentality — no agent of the Order could afford such blatant vulnerability — but nevertheless he was not about to deny that there was something about these weekly lunches, the clash of intellects and the give and take of eloquent opinions and the simple anodyne of the good Doctor's presence, that made him feel warm and satisfied in every blessed stitch.

THE END


End file.
